Abstract:What do Shakespeare and Michelangelo have in common? William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton's Timon of Athens is labelled as unfinished, akin to Michelangelo's Prisoners sculptures whose fragmentary shapes inspired non-finito aesthetics. As the only Shakespearean play to mention sculpture, I argue that Timon of Athens invites a nonfinito interpretation that captures the infinite performativity of dramatic characters who, like Michelangelo's Prisoners, cannot escape their form. Accepting Timon—as is—reveals the process of collaborative playwriting and offers a creative license for interpretation to (...) performers and readers alike. (shrink)

This case study evaluated the efficacy of semi-occluded vocal tract (SVT) therapy as a speech intervention for functional dysphonia in a 53-year-old patient. Laryngoscopic examination revealed mild erythema and mucosal irregularity in the posterior third, edema, slight interarytenoid erythema, and phonatory hiatus in the posterior third of the posterior wall. Vocal assessments were conducted before and after rehabilitation, focusing on the perceptual, acoustic, and aerodynamic aspects. The treatment plan incorporated sustained, oscillatory, and transient occlusions over 10 sessions. The results showed (...) enhanced voice timbre quality and normalization of the fundamental frequency appropriate for the patient's age and sex. The jitter, shimmer, and harmonic noise disturbances decreased, indicating improved wave stability and harmonic structure definition. The maximum expiratory and phonatory times, along with the s/z ratio, increased, leading to improved vocal efficiency. Additionally, the vocal risk indicator decreased, articulatory stability improved, and energy utilization became more efficient, resulting in more stable formants. The study concluded that SVT exercises produce positive vocal changes, suggesting that techniques aimed at modifying the vocal tract are effective for speech therapy rehabilitation in patients with functional dysphonia. (shrink)

The Social Contract Theory in the Vision of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Man is not social by nature, becoming social only under the influence of society. In the state of nature, man is solitary, autonomous, his own master. His only worry is to preserve his own life, to assure his necessities of living. With the formation of the first social groups (family), man no longer lives alone, starts to build a roof over his head, to assume certain responsibilities, to enter into communication (...) with those around him, perfecting his language and improving his way of life. With such progress, selfesteem is born, pride, the need to be recognized by others as being superior. Differences in status tear apart the previous equality and lead to conflicts between individuals. Each desires what the other desires to have, not for the sake of that good's intrinsic value, but only because the other desires it. Therefore, in order to assure their own safety, as well as that of their property, men will form a covenant – the social contract. (shrink)

The Theory of Intersubjectivity in the Work of Alfred Schutz. The world of daily life is based on intersubjectivity, on the daily social interactions of the members of the community who live in common, each besides the others, undertaking a multitude of meaningful inter-relating activities sharing in the same time (the living present) and space. The intersubjectivity of the social world is built together with and for the others, whom I may effectively know by directly interacting with them, or whom (...) I may not know at all. My relationship with these others may be of different degrees of closeness (when my experience of another is of a We-type relationship) or of foreignness (when my experience of my contemporary is of a They-type relationship).I’m directly experiencing the other, having immediate access to his subjectivity when we are engaged in a face-to-face interaction, which requires that we share a common sector of space and time. (shrink)

This study focuses on a 12-year-old girl diagnosed with a pragmatic disorder caused by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Following an initial evaluation, a pragmatic rehabilitation program was implemented using a combined approach in 15 therapeutic sessions over a 4-month period. The program consisted of structured formats organized into modules to train the verbal, paralinguistic, and nonverbal aspects of communication. The results of the re-evaluation demonstrated the program’s effectiveness, with improvements in communicative intention, proxemic skills, prosodic variations, physical contact with the (...) interlocutor, and verbal fluency in oral messages. Consequently, the implementation of the intervention program significantly enhanced the patients’ pragmatic communication skills in therapeutic, familial, and social contexts. (shrink)